In
celebration of two influential postwar artists—the German Joseph Beuys and Korean Nam June Paik—Galerie
Thomas brings together a selection of
their sculptures, drawings, multiples, and prints. The heady show, now on view in Munich, offers ample evidence of the artists’ professional and personal relationship in the form of various resonances between
their monumental works.

Paik
and Beuys first met in Düsseldorf in 1961. Though separated by 11 years and a
continent, they were both shaped by World War II and its aftermath; they also
shared interests in music, performance, and in pushing art beyond its
established boundaries. Both artists were closely involved with the Fluxus
movement and likewise embraced one of its central tenets: the total integration
of art and life.

Not only did they influence each other, they collaborated,
including on performances that focused on the destruction rather than the
playing of instruments. They also collaborated on EURASIA, an extended
artistic and social project in which they sought to break down the East–West
binary with work that demonstrated how Asia and Europe could be merged into a
holistic entity.

A
self-styled shamanic figure, Beuys often incorporated his own life experiences
into his work, which encompassed everything from extended performances to spare
drawings. Dead animals, felt, fat, blood, and honey were among the recurring
materials he called upon, each with symbolic significance. Sleds, as in his
silkscreen Hirsch auf Urschlitten (Stag on Primeval Sled) (1985), also
figured prominently in his work.

Televisions,
video cameras, and other electronic media formed the core of Paik’s
installations, sculptures, and performance pieces. (Paik’s pioneering work led to
his being dubbed the father of video art.) In I never read Wittgenstein (I
will never understand Wittgenstein) (1997), he references the famed Austrian-British
philosopher with an antique German TV set broadcasting swirling
vortexes of color, as if the philosopher’s message got beautifully twisted in translation on its way from one culture to the other.